Amazon led US stock indexes higher on Friday, while a surprisingly weak jobs report marred by some unusual occurrences cemented bets on Wall Street for another cut to interest rates next week.
- The Dow rose 288.73 points, or 0.7%, to 42,052.19.
- The S&P 500 rose 23.35 points, or 0.4%, to 5,728.80.
- The Nasdaq rose 144.77 points, or 0.8%, to 18,239.92.
Amazon climbed 6.2% after delivering a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected and was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 higher, the AP reports. Intel rallied 7.8% despite reporting a bigger loss than expected. Its revenue topped analysts' estimates, and the company gave a forecast for results in the current quarter that likewise topped expectations. Cardinal Health was another one of the market's bigger gainers and jumped 7% after topping analysts' forecasts for profit and revenue in the latest quarter. It also raised its profit forecast for its fiscal year, which is in its second quarter. They helped offset a 1.2% slide for Apple, which said it expects revenue growth in the important holiday quarter to be in the low- to mid-single digit percentages. That was below several forecasts.
The nearly unanimous expectation on Wall Street remains for the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point next week. But the weaker-than-expected jobs report wiped out the slim chance traders had been seeing of the Fed holding rates steady, according to data from CME Group. Economists said Friday's report contained a lot of noise and perhaps not much signal. Besides two hurricanes that left destructive paths across the US during the month, a strike by workers at Boeing also helped depress the numbers. Those distortions make the numbers difficult to parse, "but it doesn't change our view that the labor market should further decelerate in coming months," said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
(More
Wall Street stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
